Why older people seem to have more fragile skin? Why are the elderly seemingly more prone to bleeding from a fall than younger people?
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As we age, our bodies produce less of 2 important proteins in our skin called collagen and elastin. These proteins are responsible for giving your skin structure, making it stretchable, and helping it retain moisture. So when we get older and we have less of these proteins, our skin becomes thinner, drier, and more brittle, which makes it easier to damage.
Some of this is impossible to control and is just down to genetics and age, but also a lot of skin damage from age comes from many decades of sun exposure, so wearing sunscreen regularly when you go outside can keep you skin healthier as you get older.
A partial answer is that older people tend to be on blood thinners for various reasons including the prevention of thrombosis, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, strokes, and so on. A side effect of blood thinning drugs is easily bruising and freely bleeding under normal conditions, for while the blood thinners help to prevent blood clots, they … interfere with the normal clotting of blood.
In addition to the other comments, older people are just more fragile, in every way. That’s just part of the aging process where your body becomes less and less efficient until a problem arises it can no longer deal with and you die of old age.
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